“They’re not behind us anymore,” Kier says, voice tight.
A crow caws overhead, harsh and jarring in the unnatural hush.
“We’re not outrunning this, are we?” I whisper.
His jaw tightens, eyes flicking golden as the wolf stirs just beneath his skin.
“No,” he murmurs. “We have to go into it.”
Chapter
Fifteen
KIER
The smoke is everywhere now—thick, choking clouds that turn the morning sun into a sickly orange glow. We’re moving through a nightmare landscape of burning trees and falling ash, the heat like an oven against our skin.
“This way!” I shout over the roaring flames. I pull Lithia toward what looks like a gap in the fire line. The silver around our throats makes breathing harder, each inhalation a struggle against metal and smoke.
Behind us, voices cut through the crackling inferno. Human voices, coordinated and closing fast.
“Hurry,” Lithia gasps, stumbling over a fallen log. “They’re driving us toward?—”
A pine tree erupts, sparks shooting skyward as it topples across our path in a violent crash, flinging burning branches and flaming nettles. We skid to a halt, trapped between the fallen tree and the advancing flames.
“Fuck,” I breathe, spinning in a circle. The fire has closed around us on three sides, leaving only one narrow corridor—straight towardthe voices of our pursuers.
Lithia’s face is streaked with soot and sweat, her pale eyes reflecting the orange glow of the flames. “We can’t go back.”
“And we can’t go forward.” I scan the burning forest, looking for any option, any way out. “Unless…”
I point to a steep rocky slope rising to our left, barely visible through the smoke. “Can you climb?”
She follows my gaze to the treacherous-looking cliff face. “In this smoke? With these restraints?”
“It’s better than burning alive.”
Another tree crashes down behind us, sending up a shower of sparks that spark and sizzle against our skin. The voices are getting closer—I can make out individual words now, orders being shouted between the searchers.
“There! I saw movement!”
“Circle around, cut off their escape!”
Lithia meets my eyes, and I see the same desperate determination I feel burning in my chest. “Let’s go.”
We scramble toward the cliff face, using our hands as much as our feet on the loose scree. The silver cuffs make every movement awkward, throwing off our balance. Behind us, the fire roars closer, and ahead, the rock face seems to stretch endlessly upward.
“Don’t look down,” I call to Lithia as we climb, my fingers finding precarious holds on the rough stone. “Just keep moving.”
A gunshot echoes through the smoke below us. Then another.
“They see us,” Lithia pants, hauling herself up another few feet. Blood seeps from her palms where the rock has torn them open, but she doesn’t slow.
We climb in desperate silence, the heat from below making the rock face almost too hot to touch. My lungs burn with each breath, and my vision wavers from smoke and exhaustion. The silver poisoning isn’t helping—my strength is maybe half of what it should be.
Fifty feet up. Sixty. The voices below grow fainter, but the fire is spreading faster than we can climb.
“Kier.” Lithia’s voice is tight with strain. “I can’t?—”
